In July of 2012, I entered the San Jose, California, headquarters of Adobe for the first time. That was a crazy period for me. I was general counsel at a company supporting its ramp toward an IPO. At the same time, I had received calls about opportunities with three other companies. What’s that saying about when it rains?

To be candid, while the chance to be part of Adobe’s transformation to a SaaS and subscription business was intriguing, I was on the fence about the opportunity. The other positions included a role of much greater scale and one that was very early stage. And, of course, there was the potential for an IPO with my then current company.

A woman greeted me in the front lobby when I signed in. She politely introduced herself as Antoinette Pedroza, the assistant to the executive I would be meeting, who she explained, was running 20 minutes late. After getting me situated in a conference room and offering me a cup of coffee, she was about to leave when I asked her how long she had worked at Adobe. “Almost ten years”, she answered with an obvious touch of pride. I replied that it isn’t often that you find employees in Silicon Valley who have worked with a single company for over a decade. She smiled and then spent the next twenty minutes describing the company’s culture, values and people. When she left, I thought, “This is where I want to work.”

Now six years later, Adobe has become the coda of my legal career and it’s time for me to pursue “what’s next”. My time at Adobe was filled with professional challenges reflective of working for Silicon Valley companies at the forefront of dynamic innovation. But more than that, it was a chance to work with genuinely good people—people of integrity, intelligence, insight, and passion. (And ones who indulge my use of a Halloween photo for my corporate badge.)

When I began writing this post, I imagined acknowledging the many individuals who have impacted my career and life beginning with my first position at Sun Microsystems to now, at Adobe. However, reflective of the length of my career, this would be a very, very, long list. So, to all of you from executives to board members, to the legal and government relations teams, to the sales and marketing people, the technical talent, the members of the finance, human resource and IT organizations, outside counsel and to Antoinette (who recently celebrated her 15th anniversary at Adobe), let me just say thank you. It has been one hell of a ride, made more so by your support along the journey.

Mr. President, Senate Majority Leader McConnell, and Speaker of the House Ryan,

I was thinking about you the other week. It was on the occasion of the Santa Fe High School shooting. You know, the one where 10 people were killed and 13 wounded. Or, perhaps, you don’t recall it. After all, with almost 100 firearm fatalities per day in America, I’m sure that they all start to blend together.

Events like this must be an enormous distraction from the important work you do. I’m sure you want to talk about legislation like H.R. 4009, authorizing a parking facility to be built at the Smithsonian National Zoo, or the 70+ times you have tried unsuccessfully to kill the Affordable Care Act, or the decision to invoke tariffs to ensure that we have adequate supplies of steel and aluminum in the event of war with Canada. Instead, you were called upon to comment on yet another firearm mass killing—it must be so frustrating.

Fortunately, Title 4, Chapter 1, of the United States Code may provide relief! Let me explain.

I’ve observed that whenever there is a firearm related mass murder, you immediately provide a pro forma response through interviews and social media. They are always variations on the same theme.

For example:

From President Trump after the shooting in Parkland, Florida, “My prayers and condolences to the families of the victims of the terrible Florida shooting. No child, teacher or anyone else should ever feel unsafe in an American school.”

From Senator McConnell after the slaying of 58 people in Las Vegas, Nevada, “Keeping #LasVegas in our thoughts this morning after the horrific news.”

From Speaker Ryan after 49 people were killed in Orlando, Florida, “We pray for those brutally attacked in Orlando. While we must learn more about the attacker, the victims & families will not be forgotten.”

But we all know that you have no intention of actually doing anything that would address the tragic deaths of so many of our citizens. So, it’s a waste of your valuable time to keep having to pretend that you care. That’s where Title 4 comes in. This statute defines what constitutes the flag of the United States. What I propose is that you amend this statute to make an addition to the stars and stripes of the current flag. More specifically, I suggest that you change the official flag to include placement of the words “thoughts and prayers” as seen in the example above.

Think about it. Once this change is made you no longer need to go through the motions of acting like you give a damn. The words “thoughts and prayers” on the flag will be a constant reminder to the citizenry of this fine country that our leaders feel sad when mothers, fathers, sons and daughters are killed because of the wide availability of firearms. Once this amendment is passed, when you get a question about the most recent shooting at a school or church or concert or nightclub or movie theater you can respond by just touching the flag on your lapel pin with an empathetic look for your constituency.

Those pesky little bullets. They are not only an irritant, but also keep you from focusing on ways to balance the budget and make our government more efficient. Under your leadership, our National Debt has increased to $21 trillion for the first time in history, with an additional $1.3 trillion expected as part of last year’s Tax Reform. Because you are the party of fiscal conservatism, I’m certain you are searching for some savings in the federal budget.

Title 4 may also provide an opportunity here. In addition to codifying the appearance of our flag, Title 4 also prescribes its methods of display. Most notably, it provides, “The flag, when flown at half-staff, should be first hoisted to the peak for an instant and then lowered to the half-staff position.”

According to a GSA report from 2014, the federal government owns more than 300,000 federal buildings and leases an additional 500,000 buildings and other structures. Let’s assume that each has at least one flag pole.

I’ve spent a bit of time researching the height of flagpoles used at government buildings. In general, they range from 25 to 50 feet. Some have electric winches to raise flags to the top of the staff, but most rely on manual power. Again, for sake of argument, let’s assume that it takes on average of five minutes to raise, halt briefly, and lower a flag to half-staff. Multiply that by 800,000 flagpoles and you get almost 67,000 hours per day!

By now you’re asking why I am highlighting this calculation? Well, here’s my thinking. Whenever there is a mass shooting in this country (defined as 4 or more deaths), flags are generally lowered to half-staff. Last year there were 346 mass shootings; the year before, 384. Although it is true that not every mass shooting is recognized in this fashion, given their increasing occurrence, we are rapidly reaching the point where our flags are almost continuously at half-staff.

Thus, my second recommendation is that we amend Title 4 to provide that the flag may only be flown at half-staff. By my calculations, this would result in an annual savings of more than 24,000,000 hours per year. Note that this figure is likely conservative as it does not reflect the city and state buildings that also fly the American flag. You want better government efficiency, this is an easy place to start. Think about all the things you could do with an additional 24,000,000 hours!

This is only a partial list of the firearm fatalities. Mothers, sisters, fathers, brothers, cousins, uncles, aunts, grandparents…friends. Part of our communities. Each with a story. Each with a potential.

All gone.

And from the President and Congress all we continue to hear are “hearts and prayers, hearts and prayers.”

I was in Las Vegas for a conference last week. Yes, business as usual. That’s what we do in America these days.

As our plane touched down at McCarran International Airport, I looked out my window to the Mandalay Bay Hotel. Three weeks ago a gunman opened fire from his room there on a crowd enjoying a country music concert across the street. Fifty-eight people were killed and 546 injured in one of the most horrific mass killings in U.S. history. We are still searching for the killer’s motivation, but may never find an answer. Perhaps, there is none; perhaps, the answer is the same as the one given by the mass murderer in Springsteen’s song Nebraska, “Well sir, I guess there’s just a meanness in this world.”

On a break between meetings, I walked down the Strip to the site of the shooting. It was something I needed to do, to pay my respects. Around me, everything was seemingly as it should be in Vegas. Bachelorette parties passed by in limousines; a tour group from Japan followed a guide’s flag into a casino; a group of frat boys paraded around toting barbell shaped plastic glasses filled with daiquiris; and a retired couple from the Midwest discussed their plans to see a show that evening. All felt normal, but it shouldn’t.

At the entrance to the Mandalay, there are two small memorials to those killed in the shooting. They are the type of spontaneous remembrances containing flowers and notes from family, friends, and others that are becoming too commonplace in our country. Overhead temporary plywood panels were being removed from the shooter’s room and replaced with glass. Already the tragedy is receding from our collective consciousness. It’s as if the volume and velocity of information in our lives is keeping us in a perpetual state of distraction. Release of the Kennedy assassination documents. Squirrel! The border wall. Squirrel! Did Tillerson call Trump a moron? Squirrel! I’m not saying that these aren’t important news events, but their sheer quantity creates an environment where we rarely take the time to seek solutions. After all, in a 140 character world, there is little time for deep thinking. And so we move on.

There now hangs from the Mandalay Bay Hotel a large banner proclaiming #VegasStrong. While well intended, it has become the latest form of in memoriam marketing, the corporate equivalent of when politicians say “thoughts and prayers.” In a matter of days after the event, it was already visible on billboards, t-shirts and beer koozies. But the truth is, it’s the NRA, and the firearm lobbyists and manufacturers who are strong – not Vegas and not us. That’s the only explanation for our country failing to enact reasonable gun safety laws that are supported by most Americans and American firearm owners. Eighty-five percent of gun owners, for example, support background checks, yet they have never been enacted. (And lest anyone think that I’m anti-firearm, they’re wrong. I come from a family of military veterans, hunters and, soon, a gunsmith.) The NRA and associated powerful interests rely on our short attention spans, along with creating artificial divisions among us, to prevent common sense measures to increase firearm safety and reduce the likelihood of the next Sandy Hook, Virginia Tech, Orlando, Las Vegas, or the more than 700 firearm fatalities annually in Chicago, and other cities.

The only way that firearm safety becomes a reality is if we keep this incident in our heads and hearts. Simple actions like calling a congressman, especially if you are a firearm owner, can be effective. Also, contributing to gun violence prevention organizations.

It has taken me longer than I thought to write this. I had wanted to share some of what I learned from our expedition in a way that was constructive and positive, but that’s proven to be a challenge. With what I’ve seen and read this summer, it’s difficult to feel encouraged and upbeat.

After a month of isolation in the Arctic, I returned home to news about North Korea, the pardon of Sheriff Joe, continued Brexit challenges, Guru Singh’s conviction in Delhi and the disturbing story that Kathy Griffin and Anderson Cooper are no longer friends – who saw that coming?

While these represent significant problems (well almost all of them), there is one that dwarfs all others – global warming. I’ve tried, without success, to think of another issue from the past of similar magnitude. The closest I can come is the influenza pandemic that may have killed up to 60 million people between 1918 – 1919. That was a time when air travel was limited, so entire areas of the earth were unaffected. Unlike that calamity, global warming is currently affecting all 7.5 billion of us that inhabit the earth. And, it’s going to get worse.

Much worse.

For me, one of the more interesting parts of our Arctic journey was spending time with Chris Horvat, a climatologist from Harvard (and a genuinely entertaining fellow). It was the chance to speak with a scientist and have him validate or dismiss what I’ve heard about global warming, and more specifically sea ice. We had a great deal of time to talk because Nares Strait, the area for our journey, was unexpectedly blocked with a chaotic expanse of broken sea ice (possibly related to the thinning of the ice due to warming waters). As a result, we spent many hours together pulling rather than paddling our kayak.

A few things I learned:

The Arctic is warming at 4 to 6 times the rate of the rest of the world. This is because the summer sea ice provides a shield that reflects 85% of the sun’s radiation. When the ice disappears, the water beneath it absorbs more than 90% of that radiation. Why? Because light colors, like ice and snow are more reflective than dark colors, like ocean water. This is what scientist refer to as the albedo effect. The result is that disappearance of Arctic summer sea ice will contribute to the acceleration of the rise in global temperatures.

Summer sea ice in the Arctic has declined – as much as 70% since 1980. In the next 10 to 20 years it will disappear entirely for the first time in human existence. Think about that nugget for a moment. (Indeed, earlier this summer, an Russian oil taker was able to navigate the Northwest Passage and, more recently, a British explorer attempted to sail a small boat to the North Pole.)

My reaction when Chris told me this was, “This is terrible. What can we do to reverse the decline of the ice?”

His response frightened the hell of me. “Nothing,” he replied.

“Nothing” because the carbon we have released through the burning of fossil fuels will remain in the atmosphere for up to 200 years. So even if we could wave a magic wand and immediately eliminate the burning of coal and oil, we would still feel the impact for centuries.

So is there anything we can do to minimize the future impact? Education and awareness are a starting point. While we can’t all spend a month in a kayak with a climate scientist, there are plenty of resources on global warming. Paul Hawken’s recent book Drawdown is a good place to start. It reviews and ranks 100 different actions for addressing global warming. High on the list are switching from fossil fuels to renewables. Although none of the actions discussed is an answer for the disappearing sea ice, all of them will help lessen the impact of global warming over time. More importantly, actions we take as individuals like installing solar panels, purchasing an electric car and eating a more plant based diet send economic and political signals to investors, manufacturers and governments. Hopefully, these signals will soon be strong enough that politicians will begin to listen to scientists, instead of lobbyists.

Finally back from more than a month in the high arctic. And while I have sampled seal meat in the past (it tastes a bit like seaweed), it was not on the menu on this trip. Instead, the above title is in reference to one of my favorite quotes, this one from Knud Rasmussen, the famed anthropologist and explorer who said, “Unless you eat the seal meat, you can’t fully experience the orange.”

Rasmussen’s point was that you can’t truly appreciate the beauty in life without enduring some measure of toil and drudgery. I thought of Rasmussen’s words frequently over the last month because on our expedition we ended up eating a whole lot of “seal meat.”

What was planned as a 300 mile kayak trip to create a film about climate change was curtailed by weather and an unexpected breakup of the sea ice. (More about that in my next post.) As a result, we traveled only 60 miles using harnesses to pull our fully loaded kayaks over jumbles of ice and through meltwater pools. Thankfully, we were wearing dry suits as I fell into the icy arctic waters several times each day. On some days we achieved less than two miles in distance; on others we could not move at all because of the inclement weather.

For six of the days we were grounded as the result of continuous winds of hurricane velocity. At one point, the winds were so forceful that we couldn’t raise a tent. Instead, we huddled in our sleeping bags in a depression in the dirt praying for them to subside.

It was the most arduous undertaking of my life and also the most isolated. For more than a month we saw no planes, no boats, no cars, no roads, no telephone lines, no trash, no trails, and no footprints – other than our own. The only evidence of other humans were tent rings left by Paleo-Eskimos who lived in the area thousands of years ago.

Down to three days of remaining food and with worsening weather conditions, we used a paddle and cooking pot to repair an area for a Twin Otter to land and bring us home. The pilot made a landing worthy of Chuck Yeager as we broke into tears and applause.

I’ve always believed that every person has a special place, that location that resonates with your soul. For some, it is the beaches of Bora Bora; for others it is the streets of Barcelona and for some it is a nearby park or open space. For me it is the high arctic. It is an area of desolate beauty, almost achingly so. One where the distracting externalities of daily life – the sounds of traffic, artificial lights, connectivity – are absent. All that surrounds you is the land, sea and sky.

On this trip, I didn’t get many slices of that orange, but they were enough to whet my appetite for more.

Later this week, I’m heading north for more than a month. Really north. My travel itinerary looks like this: San Francisco to Toronto to Ottawa to Iqaluit to Resolute to Fort Conger. Fort Conger was established in 1881, by Adolphus Greeley as part of the first International Polar Year when scientists around the world traveled to the Arctic for collective research and study of the environment. (As an aside, Greeley’s expedition is a classic example of the dangers and travails of early Arctic exploration grippingly recounted in The Ghosts of Cape Sabine.)

My journey is for similar reasons. Along with my son and a few friends, we are traveling to the high Arctic to witness and better understand the impacts of the decline of sea ice on our climate. While the calving of glaciers presents dramatic visuals, what is happening with sea ice is far more harmful and insidious. Sea ice serves as a shield that reflects the sun’s rays from the planet – referred to by scientists as the albedo effect. An easier way to think of it is that sea ice is sunscreen for the planet (SPF 10,000). Human activities resulting in the rise of greenhouse gases are removing that layer of protection and our planet is rapidly getting “sunburned”.

Our plan is to start at Fort Conger and kayak south through Nares Strait – the channel between Ellesmere Island and Greenland. Over the course of five weeks we will paddle south measuring the sea ice and the impact of climate change on the Arctic where the temperatures are rising at a frightening pace. There will be just five of us: a biologist and cinematographer, a climatologist, an organic farmer, me and my son. (The latter invited because I am massively out of shape and need someone to paddle my kayak. He’s also pretty good behind a lens – see the picture above.) A major part of our effort will be to create a documentary film about what we see and experience. We are calling the project “Enduring Ice.”

All of our team (along with a host of wonderful sponsors) have contributed to the effort, but we will need additional support especially in funding production of the film. Here are some reasons you might consider being a part of Project Enduring Ice:

Mike, I’ve witnessed your weight gain from the last few years sitting behind the desk. Happy to contribute to help you shed a few pounds through weeks of daily kayaking.

Mike, I’ve been angry at you ever since (fill in the blank). I will gladly contribute to see you suffer through five weeks of arduous activity.

Mike, I’ve been dismayed at the U.S. decision to pull out of the Paris Climate Accord and I’d like to contribute as a sign of my disapproval.

Mike, I know climate change is real and that human created greenhouse gases are a significant contributor to the problem. I’d like to contribute to raise awareness in others.

Personally, I hope most of you chose no. 4, but contributions for any reason are warmly appreciated.